Family farm and rural job opportunities in Santa Catarina

Nowadays, there is a consensus about the necessity of rethinking the rural development processes,
which cannot be analyzed through traditional way. Particularly, in relation to the familiar production, it is observed that the present structural transformations have impacted decisively its form of reproduction and its relations of work. The changes in the rural job structure in Santa Catarina State indicate a decrease in working people in exclusively agricultural activities and the increase of the non-agricultural occupations. Social and economical diversities among the different regions suggest this process is far from being homogeneous in the West Region of the State,
whose economical base is the agriculture production and animal raising. In that region the opportunities in non-agricultural activities in the rural area are still very limited. Public politics for the rural development must take into account the regional specificities in order to valorize the local potentialities.